I have always wondered if the people in charge of release dates for games were stupid considering that 90%, figure may be exaggerated, of games before this year had been released between September and December. While that makes some sense because that’s the holidays and people spend a lot of money. But there are 8 other months of the year that people play games.

This year it seems they learnt their lesson and spread their releases fairly well, except the last two months. We have had Resident Evil 5, Killzone 2, Halo Wars, Prototype, inFamous, UFC, Fight Night Round 4 and more all released so far this year. The problem was howthe holiday season looked so incredibly packed.

Ill throw a few holiday 2009 games out there for you: MODERN WARFARE 2, Halo 3: ODST, Uncharted 2, Borderlands, Batman Archam Asylum, Forza 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassins Creed 2, Brutal Legend, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, Blur, Wolfenstien and Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising. I was going to exclude all the Guitar/DJ/Band Hero games and the Rock Band games but they are going to take a massive chuck of video game sales as well.

If you stopped shooting everyone maybe they wouldn't be scared to come out in 2009!

Also there have been a lot of delays for games that were meant to release alongside those games in 2009. Some of these have been scared off from Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST, easily the 2 biggest games in terms of sales that will come out this year. Others have been delayed to allow for further development time.

Games that have been delayed until 2010: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Bioshock 2, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, Red Steel 2, Heavy Rain, Singularity, Bayonetta, Army of Two: The 40^th Day, Dark Void, Splatterhouse, MAG: Shadow War and Starcraft II. Imagine if all these games coming out in the 4 months leading to Christmas a lot of them would have been largely ignored. So it’s smart they have been delayed to the first 4 months of next year right? NO.

This is going to cause the busiest first half of the year in gaming ever. If you combine those games above with the games that had already been announced for the first 4 months of 2010 you get an insane amount of games. These games are: God of War III, Darksiders, Dante’s Inferno, Alan Wake, Aliens vs. Predator, Mass Effect 2, White Knight Chronicles, Split Second, Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2. I hope that you realise that all the games that I have listed have a chance from what we have seen here at TAGS of scoring 4 - 5/5. This really conflicts me as a gamer, its great to have so much choice but it seems as if there is too much choice that I will inevitably miss a lot of games that I really wanted to play. I'm still catching up on my back catalogue from 2008 for god sake!

Kratos, fighting his way through the 2010 chaos!

There are also numerous games that have been announced that don’t have a proper date yet, Gran Turismo 5, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Max Payne 3 are good examples. This just seems like its going to be one crazy year for gaming in 2010. Also who doesn’t expect another Call of Duty, Resistance and Gears of War on top of all this start of year craziness? This isn’t a good move for the gaming industry considering its not growing at a great rate at the moment, Looking at all the games I have listed I see a lot of games that are going to be ignored by the general buying public which is sad because they are games that I don’t think deserve it. Dark Void and MAG come to mind.

So what’s the solution to this? Well I would like to see some of the games that are slated to release between January and April slip further and sit between June and August, before you all attack me think about how many games came out between June and August this year? Would you have liked more AAA Blockbusters? I know I would have, I think a 12 month calendar of good games will be better for Developers, Publishers and Gamers alike. We will be able to buy good games all year round, they would be able to make money all year round and fewer games would get over looked.